Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc., these were all supposed to help people socialize and connect and have friends. These are the wave of the future and are not going away. Perhaps I shouldn't get my Internet predictions from scripted newscasters backed up by someone trying to sell a book.

My bets are on the other side. I don't mean that Internet networking will fail. Instead I believe the social aspect will die. As we all know, people on the Internet are jerks. Would you believe I'm friendly, if slightly awkward, in real life? I don't come across as a horrible jerk, unless I'm talking to some friends who also inhabit this interweb place. But this is the Internet, so fuck you.

The future isn't in making the Internet a nicer place for college students and lazy people at work. The future is in making the Internet what it was meant to be: a place filled with sociopaths who troll each other constantly and are either looking for porn or to trick someone into looking at what would be generously described as porn. The future is in a place for assholes to get together and be assholes, together. Drama will not exist, because no one will give a shit about what anyone else thinks or said about them.

There's also the demographic which was once the foundation of the internet but which has been ignored in recent years: losers. They just want to hide in their bubbles, or are too scared to leave them, and function best, or more accurately, only function, when left entirely alone. Even the fake social nature of Facebook is too much for them. Just as the Cataclysm expansion is sometimes claimed to be about bringing back former players, so will the new antisocial networking trend be about bringing back this lost demographic.

The only real question is what we will name this place. I imagine the Japanese will pioneer it, because they're weird (scientific fact), but Americans will spread it, because we like stealing ideas and trying to get rich off them. Maybe it will have a number in it. The Internet likes numbers, especially antisocial people who prefer to reduce others to numbers.

8
comments:

I like how you refuse to name it, like it's going to cast its baleful gaze upon you. You must conquer your fears! Go into the bathroom, light a candle, and say its name into the mirror three times. Then look away, because something is going to pop up. Just don't click the thumbnail.

I call it "Fakebook"...people very often try to portray themselves as they'd like others to see them, and it's usally pretty far from the truth. Oh and another thing...have you ever noticed that your "friends" on FB are usually not the same group of people you spend real-life time with (and vice versa).

I gotta agree, everyone on those websites are so fake I just don't mess with them, beleive me people have made anti social jokes about me numerouse times but I have a strict no facebook/myspace/twitter personal rule I try to follow, call me crazy but I don't think those websites are good for the ego of well...anyone. They turn humble people into arrogant jack asses and they make arrogant jack asses worse. Aside from that I don't feel comfortable with the jack asses of the net knowing anything about my personal life.

The basic foundation of the internet is all about sharing. Sharing information, sharing thoughts, sharing accessibility...

but who in the world came up with the idea that one should also share his own personal life in there?

And why did all those idiots on MySpace/Twitter/Facebook fell for it?

Anti-Social Networking would be just that: coming back to the original intent of the internet: share info, share thoughts, share every freaking abstract instrument possible... but don't share your own life...

Frankly, I believe the opposite of what you are trying to imply. Assholes will stop being assholes on an anti-social networking place... because nobody will even bother to notice someone who fails to contribute with constructive input.